Widows & Divorcees
by Kaesteranya
Summary: Persona 3 fanfiction. These are drabbles set after the game, revolving around Aigis, Yukari, Mitsuru and their in ability to deal with the loss of Minato.
1. At most, flowers

**At most, flowers.**

_Set after the game, so spoilers for the end do apply. This was written in accordance to a prompt from a friend: "Rather be a widow than a divorcee"._

_Title taken from the 31 Days theme for August 19, 2005._

* * *

Their visits to their sleeping comrade used to be a quarterly habit, and their way of keeping track of each other before they were all lost in the big city. They became less frequent as the years went on, and it wasn't long before Aigis and Yukari Takeba were the only ones who still came around every three months, to sit by his bed and remember. Sometimes, one of the others would drop in and fill the room with the sound of a less familiar voice, but for the most part it was the two of them and their silence. They did not wonder why their comrades did not come around as often—that he had touched all of them was unquestionable, but that his presence in Aigis' and Yukari's lives expressed a hundred and one could have beens made all the difference.

Aigis once asked Yukari why she kept coming back. Between the two of them, the weapon pointed out, Yukari had a better chance at moving on and really living, if she wanted to. Yukari did not answer her, at least not with words. She could not bring herself to say that maybe a part of her liked mourning.


	2. Frailer than most deep dreams

**Frailer than most deep dreams**

_Takes place quite some time after the game, so spoilers do apply. Done for the prompt "beauty in a breakdown", with a title taken from the 31 Days prompt for March 21, 2006._

* * *

"Ah! Miss… Takeba, right?"

"Mm, that's right."

"Hold on, let me get your usual."

"Thanks."

The pharmacist behind the counter beamed, and then turned and jogged off, entering the maze of aisles full of medicine behind him. Yukari Takeba rifled through her bag, stopped, fidgeted, pushed her hair behind her ears, looked around. It was a Monday, Day-Who-Knows-What, Month-Kami-sama-Only-Knows, Year Twenty-Five since she had started breathing.

"Here we are! We'll be putting it on your tab, as always."

"Okay."

"Just sign right here…. there you go. Have a nice day!"

Yukari Takeba smiled, waved but didn't answer. She dashed out of the pharmacy and headed straight for the train station; she was running late for work, so there wouldn't be time for a cigarette. Besides, she was supposed to have quit months ago. Habits, though, were hard to kick for someone like her. She had once figured that if she constantly reminded herself that it was also her mother's habit it would be easier for her to let go, but had soon realized that the only thing it did for her was make her feel worse about needing it.

Office ate away her entire morning and her entire afternoon, excluding that one not-too-glorious over that was torture under the euphemism of 'lunch break'. Evening found Yukari Takeba sitting on the lid of her toilet bowl, sometimes smoking, mostly staring at her latest bottle of pills. It took her approximately three hours to realize that Fuck It, She Needed to Sleep and Popping was the Only Way How. She could feel bad some other time. Feeling bad was for weak people, and she knew she wasn't weak; she couldn't have been. She had saved the fucking world once.

Yukari Takeba counted three (just the right amount to allow her to sleep like the dead, pun intended), took them with a glass of sugar water to make it all go down easier, flipped on a pair of earphones remarkably like the pair that had belonged to a boy she had known, curled up with a pillow and shut her eyes. This was how she made sure she did not think of him all the time.


	3. We share our mother's health

**We share our mother's health**

_Set after the game, so spoilers for the end do apply; I'm also assuming that Social Link magic DIDN'T kick in, and Yukari is still not cool with her mother. This was written in accordance to a prompt from a friend: "You can't always get what you want"._

_Title taken from the 31 Days theme for May 16, 2007._

* * *

"You're seeing somebody, aren't you? Or you were, anyway… same banana, especially if you're hung up on it."

Yukari took the stirrer and began drawing figure 8's in her coffee. Her mother lit up a cigarette. She wondered what had inspired the woman to attempt to bond with her estranged daughter by talking about men. She also wondered, as she often did, why she still gave her mother the opportunity to attempt to bond in the first place.

"Don't try to deny it," mother went on, in that sort of mother's tone that should have been teasing but ended up backfiring into patronizing. "I know love when I see it. Or what you must THINK is love, anyway. You know, ideally you're too young to know what it is, and too old to be duped by bullshit."

Usually, Yukari's mother would take the opportunity to talk (rave, bitch, weep over) this or that boyfriend (sometimes ex, sometimes current), "since we're on the topic anyway, yeah?" So, of course, Yukari was a little surprised at the woman's silence. Or maybe it was because she was retouching her lipstick.

"Well? Speak up, girl. We're rarely together like this, you know."

Since she had grown past the stages where using tears or sullen "You think you know mes" were in fashion, Yukari did not immediately answer. She was thoroughly tempted to tell her mother about everything — the Dark Hour, the truth behind her father, the embrace by the coastline, the room in an obscure corner of the hospital — just so that she could, for the first time in her life, have the pleasure of shutting her mother up. Secrets, however, were best kept. Else, they would not be hers anymore.

It was evening by the time they went their separate ways: mother had a date, and Yukari supposedly had other things to do beyond play the obedient daughter. The girl rode the train: they were playing his favorite song. She got off at the next stop and took the bus instead.

The hospital was closing down to visitors, but the staff did not stop her — she was a friend of the Kirijo Group, and their reach was long. Yukari found herself hurrying, impatient and almost anxious to reach the room. She told herself that it was because Aigis was having her routine check-up at the labs and it didn't seem right for him to be alone.

She found him as she always did: lying still, eyes closed, thinner than he should have been, sleeping the sleep of the undead. She did not know what made her take off her shoes and slip between the sheets beside him. She blamed it on her mother and that woman's many men and empty nights.

The room was quiet, but Yukari could barely hear him breathing. She put her head against his chest, counting out the beat of his heart.


	4. I am the lover whom you will betray

**I am the lover whom you will betray**

_Theme date: May 27, 2006._

_This was done for a prompt from a friend: "do it in the dark with smiles on our faces"._

* * *

The last memory that Aigis had of Minato when he had still been awake was being paired with him by the luck of the draw: their party had been split up during one of SEES' routine missions in Tartarus, and she had been fortunate enough to run into him first.

Having Fuuka as their observer usually made it easy for the exploration team to regroup — Minato would, as always, instruct Juno's mistress to focus on guiding the rest of the group to the stairwell, because he was always perfectly confident in his own ability to find the stairs for himself. Aigis remembered feeling strange and warm when Minato made an exception that one time, and explained that it was because she was with him and the last thing he wanted was to have someone hurt on his watch. "Akihiko and Shinji will be fine on their own," he said, with a brief smile in Aigis' direction. "They're tough. And I think that Shinji will just get irritated and say that I'm coddling him if I ask Fuuka to help him out."

The floor was impossibly large, larger than what they usually encountered, but they barely encountered anything on their way to the stairwell. If for anything, it had been a strangely romantic walk through shadows, with Minato strolling along with a sword in hand and Aigis right behind him, imprinting the sight of his back in her memory. She found herself remembering that day when later, in the next year, she saw Minato turn his back on them all and step through a door that no one else would be able to enter.


	5. Embroider me with tears

**Embroider me with tears**

_Theme date: February 15, 2006._

_Done for a prompt from a friend: "—a little love to ease the pain". Set more than a few years after the end of the game._

* * *

By using the funds in the mutual Yukari Takeba and Aigis Trust Fund, Aigis kept things in order within Minato's room. Since Yukari was fully human and had fully human concerns (job, parent, friends, meds, job), Aigis was left with the menial details of watching over the one they both loved, and assuring that he was comfortable. She cut his hair, replaced the flowers in the vase, kept the fruit bowl for visitors full, read the newspaper out loud for him every morning and watched television with him every night. Whenever it got cold, she dressed him in a comfortable robe and put socks on his feet.

Aigis always went out on the weekends, albeit briefly, for the groceries and any extra thing that happened to catch her interest and seemed like the sort of thing Minato would like to see or read when he woke up. She checked the closet every spring, cleaned out was not necessary, and went out again to buy him new clothes whenever she deemed that he needed them; she also made it a point to take time out to buy a few articles of her herself, because Yukari told her that spoiling one's self was oftentimes the best remedy for loneliness. During the holiday season, she bought a cake and ate it at his bedside with Yukari, but not before going out with the blond to give gifts to the staff that watched over Minato with them.

When she had first started these rituals, Aigis had told herself that it was because she was learning to become more human by keeping Minato human. Sometimes, when it was just Yukari (the only one who understood) and her, Aigis would say that it was his final and greatest gift to her, giving her a chance to know what it was like to grow and love. It would be a while yet before she would know enough to admit to herself that it wasn't really about him: it was about her own peace of mind.


	6. All night long I've held your hand

**All night long I've held your hand.**

_This piece is partially inspired by the initial parts of the Aigis chapter of FES. See, it's revealed in those parts that the group actually took Minato to the dorm first after the end of the game – worst fears aside, they had believed that he was only sleeping._

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 14, 2005._

* * *

As she sat there at his bedside with his hand slipped between her own, Yukari Takeba had found herself thinking about the last time something like that had happened, with her in a chair by a bed and him sleeping like a log and her again, worrying about it. When he had woken up back then, she had not been willing to admit to herself how much it had relieved her, to hear that soft intake of breath, to see him opening his eyes. Back then, it had embarrassed her, how she had proceeded to fill the hospital room with useless words and look back to see him just watching her with that sort of confused look that indicated that he was just too polite to ask her what she was really getting at. He always had been the quiet type, the listener, the comforting presence just to her left, calmly pretending to blow his head away each and every time in order to destroy their enemies. Those were the things Yukari told herself that night, in order to keep from thinking of the possibility that maybe, this time, it would be different. She resolved, as she kissed his cheek and stepped out to take a shower, that she would tease him for his silence when he woke up.

The next day, after a team of the best doctors in the city and specialists from the Kirijo Group had taken a look and stepped out to quietly inform SEES that Minato Arisato wasn't ever going to open his eyes, Yukari went back to his room, pulled up a chair and took hold of his hand again. She watched him, recalled that hospital room of months past, ignored the faint pulse beneath the skin of his wrist, and tried to remember the exact sound and cadence of his voice.


	7. Der Tod und das Mädchen

**Der Tod und das Mädchen.**

_The title of this was taken from the 31 Days theme for May 19, 2007, and it apparently means "Death and the Maiden" in German. It was inspired by the first few Aigis-centric scenes in the Aigis chapter of the FES._

* * *

It was only after she lost the ability to sleep that Aigis learned the true meaning of a minute, the true length of an hour. Prior to that, in the year that would end up being the last year of her life where she was ever happy, she had thought that sleep was a useless and entirely human function – even after she had gotten in touch with things like Feeling and Emotion, the thought of closing her eyes and drifting off had irked her. In the fight for the salvation of the world, every moment counted: she could spend her time tending to her teammates, who actually needed the downtime.

The last dream she ever had was of floating down a stream filled not with water but voices, looking up at a concrete-colored sky with square clouds and the shining silhouettes of golden gears further above. He floated just above her, one arm outstretched, fingers grasping at air, grasping for her. She had woken up just before she had reached out to touch him back. Aigis remembered spending most of that day attempting to close her eyes and return to that dream, only to discover, with a mild amount of horror, that sleep would never come, that even if she stayed in her room and closed her eyes and willed her mind to think only of him, that same vision and moment was lost to her forever.

Mitsuru did not ask Aigis to explain herself when the cyborg asked that all the clocks in the lounge, the kitchen and the one in her room be removed. Aigis was thankful for that: she had not been looking forward to telling the girl that the ticking was likely to drive her insane and having no way of explaining it. There was no way someone who could sleep could understand what it was like to sit there, staring at numbers, feeling a second drag itself out into eternity with every small movement of the hands.


	8. Look at the follies of love

Look at the follies of love

**Look at the follies of love.**

_Written for a friend, as part of the requirements for this meme I utterly failed. It's written with the prompt "cause & effect" in mind, and the title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 25, 2007. Oh yeah, and there are spoilers for the October Full Moon here!_

Beyond the fact that October the Fourteenth was fast approaching, Akihiko should have known that it would end for the two of them that night, when Shinji had dragged him away after their sortie in Tartarus, thrown him to his bed and fucked him the whole evening. There had been something cold and desperate and sad about their coming together and he had tried to ask, but his childhood friend had merely grunted in response and did things to make him even forget what he had been talking about only seconds before. It was near sunrise when Shinji finally relented, leaving Akihiko to limp back to his room, take a warm shower and stare at the bruises and teeth marks in the mirror before he covered them up with his uniform. They ate breakfast together in total silence, but sometime afterward and just when he was stepping out the door he thought he heard Shinji mumble an apology. Akihiko did not ask him about it after – he had figured that he could have only imagined it.

The full moon came and went, and when the Dark Hour was done and the Kirijo Group's men were cutting Shinji's body open for the mandatory autopsy, Akihiko was left to sit on Shinji's bed with his legs drawn up to his knees, remembering their last time, remembering the apology that was not an apology, wondering why he hadn't known sooner. If he had figured it out, he would have never let it happen, and he wouldn't have ever let Shinji touch him. Better to live with nothing than wake up to an endless beginning.


	9. Those who early loved in vain

**Those who early loved in vain.**

_Spoilers for the real ending of the game, and FES. The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for December 12, 2008._

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* * *

  
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Yukari is, understandably, a mess on the night that they discover the truth: that Minato Arisato isn't in a coma, that he's really dead and all they have is a body in a hospital cot somewhere in the city. Mitsuru finds her in the bathroom, sitting in the tub with her knees drawn right up to her chest, battered by the water streaming down from the shower head and apparently not caring. Listening carefully reveals that she's crying – she's keeping it quiet of course, but it's there, to those who care enough to notice.

When Mitsuru strips and crawls in to take Yukari into her arms, she tells herself that this isn't just about being a leader and making sure that one of her comrades will be good to go and fight on another day. This is about communal loss, communal regret, and all the things that they wished to say. This is about loving the same boy and getting nothing but his corpse in return and one too many memories that no sleeping pills and no amount of anything can ever erase.


End file.
